The Metamorphosis
by Miss Pookamonga
Summary: Even the worst of men can change in a single instant, through the love of Christ. The story of one man as he witnesses the Crucifixion of Christ. Warning: some mild graphic imagery.


_Dear Readers,_

_I just came up with this idea tonight. I wasn't planning for it to be as long as it turned out to be, but sometimes inspiration goes a lot farther than you expect it to. I owe it all to the Big G...I hope you enjoy. There's a lot that can be read in between the lines. Warning: this is a sad piece, but there is some hope in the end. Please read and review. God bless._

_Best Regards from a Bookworm,_

_Miss Pookamonga ;-P_

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_**"He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you may also believe." John 19:35 **_

Lucius spat on the ground. I watched him grimace at the sight before us, at the hundreds—or was it thousands—of people pressing against each other, screaming incomprehensibly at us and at each other. Some were swearing, others were clawing and even biting at those in their way. Loners were drowned in the chaotically flowing river of the mob, feet and hands were mercilessly trampled, children were ripped from the protection of their families and suffocated in the turmoil. Cries split through the tension-thick air, stunning even the most resilient of ears. Never during the time of our service had we ever seen such pandemonium among the Empire's subjects, especially pandemonium centered around one single person. A man who had been deemed a worthless criminal, a disruptive rebel, for that matter. It both disturbed and intrigued us.

We stood at the inner edge of the chaotic throng of human bodies, acting as the guards just in case anything got out of hand. In my opinion, things had been beyond "out of hand" since early that morning, and we soldiers, although fierce and ruthless that we were, would never be able to calm the swirling, brutal storm that surrounded us. We looked on impassively as the grim procession approached the rocky crest of the death-trodden hill. A man hefting the weight of an enormous wooden cross struggled towards us, followed by some of our fellow soldiers and the elite of the Sanhedrin. He hardly looked like a human being at all. What we could see of his body was covered entirely with blood. His face was so bloodied that it looked, from a short distance, like a mangled piece of raw meat. Scarlet rivers poured from the thorns piercing his head, red dripped from his hands onto his white garment, staining it. His mouth hung half-open, blood running from it as well. He heaved short, labored breaths—breaths that indicated that he was near the point of total surrender, but for some reason I felt that it was a different type of surrender than that I had witnessed on the faces of countless criminals before.

When he finally reached that spot, he stumbled and nearly fell to his knees, but two soldiers I recognized as Julius and Kostos grabbed the cross and lifted it off the criminal's shoulders. He staggered away from the wooden instrument of doom as Julius and Kostos slapped it onto the ground. Lucius and I, along with two other soldiers, Marcus and Remus, stared at the spectacle as Julius, Kostos, and several other soldiers readied for the crucifixion. Suddenly, we heard the grating sound of Officer Claudius's voice shouting at us to strip the criminal of his clothing before he was crucified. Such was the custom at this type of execution. You take the criminal's clothes, and hang him on the cross naked, subjecting him to total humiliation and leaving him to struggle for breath until he suffocates. Standard procedure, it was...but not this time. This time was much different.

I realized that after we stepped toward the tottering mess of a man and roughly grabbed him by the arms and shoulders. We each instinctively readied ourselves for a bout of thrashing and screeching in resistance and fear, but were equally surprised and shocked to receive none of the sort. I glanced at Lucius questioningly, but he shrugged it off and proceeded to grab the man's tunic collar. He was about to rip the garment when Marcus yelled out in a loud voice.

"Look at this. The garment is seamless! A poor man with king's clothing?"

Remus snickered at the comment, not noticing the hint of wariness and confusion in Marcus's voice. "Eh, you're right. What'd you do, steal this from Herod?" he sneered.

Immediately, the man turned his blood-spattered face toward Remus and stared at him. Remus's smug face suddenly contorted in fear and quite possibly, guilt, as he gaped at the figure before him. He moved his jaw as if to say something, but nothing came out.

"What's wrong, Remus, is the blood too much for you to handle?" I laughed half-heartedly, trying to wipe away the growing tension. I had never seen Remus act this way before; he was the toughest and loudest soldier I knew. Seeing him speechless and almost afraid unnerved me more than I wanted to admit.

At my comment, the man turned his face away from Remus and towards me. The moment his eyes made contact with mine, I understood what had driven my friend to such a reaction. The dark brown pools were overflowing with despair and sorrow—sorrow greater than any I had ever witnessed in my life of watching execution after execution. They bored into my eyes, and seemed to cut through the barriers surrounding my mind and my most intimate thoughts and pierce my soul. I could swear I could_ feel _the man's presence—a strange, ethereal presence—within me, reading me like a scroll, perceiving my identity and everything I had ever kept hidden from others. In that moment, I felt utterly vulnerable and helpless, like a newborn baby; yet, at the same time, I sensed an unspeakable aura of peace and calm spreading throughout my soul, drawing out parts of me that I had stashed away long ago in the depths of my own spirit. For a moment, I nearly gave in to whatever was washing over me, but Officer Claudius's bark caused me to snap out of the trance.

"IDIOTS! What's wrong with you?! HURRY UP!"

Immediately, my three friends sprung into action, taking the pure white seamless garment off the strange man, but not ripping it. I, however, paused for a minute to look back at his face before continuing with my work. Upon gazing into his eyes again, I knew at once that this was an innocent man.

I proceeded to help my friends remove the garment from the unflinching, unmoving man with an incredible cloud of guilt hanging over me. I had seen his innocence in his eyes. This man, with the way he willingly accepted every bit of torture and humiliation silently, and with the way he seemed to perceive the makings of people's very souls, could in no way be a criminal like the other two men already hanging from their crosses. It felt so very wrong—even more than just wrong—to be subjecting this man to this sort of treatment. I had never before cared about the guilt or innocence of those I had helped torture and execute, but a change had suddenly come over me, and now every moment in which I had ignored a human being's dignity came back to haunt me.

We finished the task quite quickly, leaving the bruised and beaten man bare, save for a loincloth. We looked up at Officer Claudius for approval, and he nodded to us with a grunt of affirmation. We took one last close-up look at the man who could change a person's spirit in a split second, gazing into the unfathomable brown pools. He merely stared back sadly, as if he was mourning for us, not for his own life. We pulled away, confused, and walked away carrying his garment as the other soldiers dragged him toward his terrible fate.

As we stepped to the side, once again resuming our positions as apathetic onlookers, Lucius suddenly spoke up in that low, serious-toned voice of his. "This garment ought to be worth something, you know. Because it doesn't have any seams," he mused. "We should keep it."

Marcus, who had been staring intently at the man, snapped out of whatever daze he was in and turned sharply on Lucius. "What do you mean, 'we'? If this thing is really worth a lot, I want all the money I can get!"

Remus frowned angrily. "Why do you get to keep it? You always get to keep everything!"

"I do not! Besides, I ripped most of it off him," Marcus snapped.

Lucius held up his hands quickly to abruptly cut off the pending fight. "Let's not argue. I say we cast dice for it. That way one of us can win the garment fairly."

Remus opened his mouth to say something nasty, but noticing the deathly sternness of Lucius's expression, he thought better of his action and clamped his jaw shut. "All right," he muttered through gritted teeth.

We sat down in a rocky spot at the corner of the mob. Lucius procured some dice from his satchel and placed them on the ground. "Best bet wins," he said gruffly. He turned to me. "Since you haven't said anything this whole time, you go first."

I was hardly paying attention, however. I was staring at the man, who was now stretched out upon the cross, screaming and wailing in extreme pain as my fellow soldiers mercilessly drove metal spikes into his wrists and feet. With every _thump_ of the hammer, the din of the crowd crescendoed mightily, and my heart felt like it was ripping in half. I, who had for years blocked all compassion out of my soul, now felt it flooding my whole being as I watched the helpless victim.

"_Hey,_" hissed Remus, smacking my arm. "Hurry up, I want my turn! Are you deaf?!"

I turned back around and stared at the dice before me. Two little dotted squares could earn me a fortune...but then I thought of the man looking into me, and guilt encompassed me again. For the first time in years, I felt sick both emotionally and physically. I wanted to run away and hide.

"I don't think I want to," I choked suddenly, trying not to sound too sentimental.

Marcus shrugged. "All right then, but you're missing out on a good chance," he said as he picked up the dice and shook them in his hand, while Remus voiced angry comments about Marcus's selfishness.

I stood up and walked back toward the center of the terrible commotion and stared up at the man on the cross, which was now being hoisted up and situated in the ground. The man was already struggling for breath, and I knew that he wasn't going to last anywhere near as long as the crucified usually did. I continued to stare, still feeling like his eyes, although I couldn't see them clearly, were boring through me, reading my thoughts. In a way, it was comforting, although initially the reaction was to push the presence away. Slowly, I began to block out the chaos and the screams and the pushing and fighting and animosity and focused on that feeling, if it could be called a feeling. It was so much more than that. For the first time since childhood, I felt a complete sense of peace, of openness...of _love_. Thinking that this man could do such a thing, that he could bring about love in the heart of someone as cold as myself even as he was dying drew me to tears. And I stood like that for the next six hours, floating in that presence, allowing myself to be immersed in it, all the while letting the tears to flow freely down my hardened face.

As it approached the fifteenth hour of the day, the sky, which had been a clear blue, suddenly began to darken. Ominous clouds appeared from nowhere and obscured the clear, warm, pure light of the sun. I felt a cold shiver run down my back. Somehow I knew he was going soon, that it was going to all be over. It felt almost as if he was _telling _me somehow, through that presence within me. Inside me, something protested like a little child, something whined and pleaded with him not to leave, but I felt the presence slowly slipping away. I felt like screaming. I needed that peace—but more importantly now, I didn't want him to die, especially after what he had done for me in the mere space of a day.

With the onset of the clouds, and now, a cold breeze, people had begun to leave the scene. Whether they were scared or simply did not care to watch the man's sufferings anymore, I did not know, but little by little, the crowd drifted away. Some weeping peasants remained though, staring pitifully up at him and crying out in sorrowful voices. One woman threw herself down on the ground and sobbed into the dirt as she gripped her tunic.

And then, out of the crowd emerged an older woman and a young man who was clutching her tightly but lovingly, as if to comfort her. I watched with interest as the two approached the foot of His Cross, the woman weeping and the man biting his lip to hold back an onslaught of tears. She touched His feet tenderly and kissed them, then looked longingly up at Him. The man with her took her into her arms and looked up as well. He then said something to the both of them, I could not hear what, but I carefully studied the expression of extreme pain on the woman's face and her eyes that were screaming in anguish. The realization suddenly struck me with an agonizing blow. She was His mother.

At that moment, something else came over me. I undid the clasp of my helmet, wrenched it off my head, and thrust it on the ground. Then I let myself sob openly, not caring if anyone was watching or criticizing me. That suddenly didn't matter anymore.

After a few minutes, a sharp cry cut through the air, startling everyone gathered there. We gazed up at Him. He had His head lifted up to the sky, and He seemed to be praying. Then, he cried out loudly, "Father! Into...your hands...I...commend..._my spirit_!" A second of eerie silence penetrated the air. And then, slowly, His head dropped toward His chest. He was dead.

All I heard was a bloodcurdling scream before the ground began to convulse. People shrieked and tried to run, some tripping and falling. Soldiers yelped out in confusion, two men of the Sanhedrin threw themselves to the ground, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Marcus stumbling down the rocky slope with the garment clutched in his hand. I was thrown up into the air by the earthquake, and I hurtled downward, slamming into the hard ground. I felt raindrops begin to pelt me in the head, and I could even see, from where I was, everything around me darken under the curtain of thick black clouds. The violent shaking continued for a few more seconds, although it seemed more like hours, then abruptly subsided, allowing me to suddenly hear the ear-splitting crack of thunder crossing the sky. Lightning bolts flashed against the black backdrop, causing the area to look like a part of Hell.

I was shocked when I suddenly heard words coming from my own mouth. They were an admittance of something that I now realized I had known all along and denied, up until that day. It was like an intuition rising up from my subconscious. "Truly, this was the Son of God," I whispered.

And the rain fell in sheets, soaking all that were left. The remaining soldiers were instructed to break the legs of the other two prisoners, so that they would die faster. One soldier plunged his spear into His side to ensure that He was truly dead. When he did, blood and water spurted out, bathing us all. I was repulsed by the sight, yet I strangely felt blessed by what had just happened. I watched His mother with immense sorrow as she looked up at her dead Son, an expression of insurmountable grief, yet of peaceful acceptance covering her angelic, immaculate face.

I wanted to stay as long as I could on that hill, lamenting His death, and pondering over the terrible events of that day. But I vaguely felt someone—Lucius, most likely—slowly leading me away. I was too shocked, too tired, too overwhelmed to pay close attention to my senses or to protest. All I wanted to do was sink to the ground and cry. I didn't quite understand what had just occurred, but I knew that He had changed me, and that I would never be the same apathetic person again. I knew that He had changed me, and that I would never be the same apathetic person again. Yet I felt alone; I couldn't feel the presence. It wasn't there, it was gone, lost somewhere among dead souls...

...but suddenly, I felt a warmth. A small glow from a candle within my spirit. A whispering voice calming me.

_Do not be afraid. I am with you..._


End file.
